I bring you another Russian vs. English clash!
If you know Russian, check out the comments here. I'm trying to hold back the tide of insanity there, but phonetics is not really my field of expertise, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
For those of you who can't read Russian, here's a quick summary of what went on:
A user posts an entry wondering how children of English speakers learn to pronounce words and spell them. Apparently, it's not by reading and listening, since in English there isn't any correlation between what's written and how it's pronounced. Unlike, of course, Russian, where everything is written exactly as it is spoken.
I obviously object and end up in a discussion with a person, who ends up claiming that /ʌ/ and /o/ are allophones.
The author of the entry itself then comes claiming that it is impossible to separate English words into syllables.
A third commenter says the author is right about there being no connection between pronunciation and spelling because English has diphthongs and digraphs, while Russian doesn't. When I point out the use of ь and ъ in digraphs, he says that it's "completely different thing".
If you know Russian, check out the comments here. I'm trying to hold back the tide of insanity there, but phonetics is not really my field of expertise, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
For those of you who can't read Russian, here's a quick summary of what went on:
A user posts an entry wondering how children of English speakers learn to pronounce words and spell them. Apparently, it's not by reading and listening, since in English there isn't any correlation between what's written and how it's pronounced. Unlike, of course, Russian, where everything is written exactly as it is spoken.
I obviously object and end up in a discussion with a person, who ends up claiming that /ʌ/ and /o/ are allophones.
The author of the entry itself then comes claiming that it is impossible to separate English words into syllables.
A third commenter says the author is right about there being no connection between pronunciation and spelling because English has diphthongs and digraphs, while Russian doesn't. When I point out the use of ь and ъ in digraphs, he says that it's "completely different thing".